


Secrets

by mayfriend



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Beards (Relationships), Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Closeted Character, Dementia, F/F, F/M, Gen, Growing Old, HIV/AIDS, Headcanon, Internalized Misogyny, M/M, Old Age, Old Friends, Old Married Couple, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 02:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16054028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: Peggy Carter is a woman with secrets, but she’s not the only one.





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SearchingforSerendipity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/gifts).



> For Maria, whose Daniel Sousa made me want to write this fic, and whose friendship makes me happier than words can express.

**A secret:** Jack Thompson had his first kiss with his best friend, Alfred. He just wanted to try it, and he had to beg Alfred to let him try, just once. He wanted to know what all the fuss was about, wanted to know why his big sister spent so much of her time kissing boys behind the gymnasium. They were up a tree at the time - Alfred insisted, so no one could see - and it was barely more than a peck. Then Alfred pulled away, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, disgusted.

“That was _gross,”_ Alfred said with feeling, and Jack rushes to echo him, realising he was supposed to feel the same way.

But he doesn’t. Alfred’s lips were chapped and thin, but they didn’t feel gross. Not at all. Alfred never tells a soul, and neither does Jack.

 **A secret:** when Daniel Sousa was six years old, he stole a handful of liquorice from Mrs Francotelli’s corner shop. He knows it’s wrong, knows it’s bad, and he does it anyway. He could say it was a cry for attention, an act of daring, but it wasn’t. Daniel hadn’t had liquorice before, not ever, and he _wanted_ it.

So he secretes a coil of black candy in his pocket, and acts like he does normally. It scares him, just a little, how easy it is. How he can smile at Mrs Francotelli and play with the other boys like he isn’t a thief. When he gets home, the liquorice has stained the lining of his shorts, and he gobbles it down before his Pai comes home and sees.

He throws it all up that night. Not from guilt, but from eating too much. When his Mae asks him why his vomit is black, he tells her that he thinks it’s a bug going round. By the time Mae has released him from two days of strict bedrest and no dairy, Daniel decides it’s a punishment from God and never does it again.

 **A secret:** Peggy Carter used to be left handed. Her mummy and daddy used to make her write with her right hand for hours, no matter how wrong it felt, no matter how messy her handwriting.

It hurt for a while. She fancies she felt her bones change after all those long nights of copying bible verses and passages from Austen and Dickens. When she picked up a pen, she used her left hand without thinking, but slowly she was trained to swap it over to her right on instinct. Her handwriting was better than Michael’s.

When she joined the army, she was asked which hand she used, and she said _right_ without hesitation. After a few sticky moments where she had to use her left, her file ends up saying ambidextrous.

Peggy isn’t quite sure which is true anymore. All she knows is that she is stronger because of it.

 **A secret:** Jack went out with girls because it was the done thing, not because they made him feel anything. He never really liked them all that much. To him, girls were these small, useless creatures who tittered over dresses and dances and songs. Girls were to be protected, to be cherished - he learned that on his poppa’s knee - but they weren’t quite as _good_ as boys. He learned that from his poppa too, even if it wasn’t a direct lesson - he learned it from the way his pops cut off his mother at dinner without a care in the world, the way he lowered his voice when he told Jack a naughty story and said _don’t tell the girls, women don’t understand._

Boys, Jack liked. He liked bumping shoulders with his pals after a good game, liked telling lewd jokes and the reactions he received, liked wrestling when a problem came up instead of talking about feelings, and getting so drunk he couldn’t see straight and he needed to be supported as he wobbled back home. But he wasn’t supposed to get drunk just so his friends would touch him. He wasn’t supposed to wrestle because he liked the feeling of a man’s skin under his hands. He wasn’t supposed to feel a prickle of jealousy when he saw a pretty girl sat on the lap of a buddy, not of him but of _her._ He wasn’t supposed to get himself off at night thinking about the sharp collarbones and neck scruff of the boys in the locker rooms.

 _Man shall not lieth with man, for it is an abomination._ Jack knew the verse, he’d been going to Sunday School for as long as he could remember. So he picks up girls - it’s not hard, he knows he’s handsome and doesn’t see any point in false modesty. He takes them out to the pictures and buys them flowers, because that is what he’s meant to do. He’s a perfect gentleman, but it’s not exactly hard to be one when he has no interest in women at all. He makes sure to break it off as soon as he thinks she might be feeling something, though.

He may be an abomination, but he’s never been cruel.

 **A secret:** Daniel got into a lot of fights as a kid. He had a lot to prove - he’s one of seven, and he wonders sometimes if his Mae and Pai forget he’s there sometimes. He’s not the oldest (Roderigo) or the smartest (Sao) or the youngest (Isabel)- he’s just himself, dark and uninspiring, easy to overlook.

He’s harder to overlook when he’s got busted knuckles and a bloody lip. He knows his parents worry - knows that they wonder where all this anger is coming from, why it has come out in him and not the others - but he also knows they won’t listen if he tells them. So he carries on - he breaks his nose twice in two years, and gets a reputation as a hot head. He’d laugh if his family didn’t buy into it.

He’s angry, sure, but only at people who deserve it - Joey Villanueva had been looking up girl’s skirts, Arturo Roman called his little sister a whore and he caught Dennis de Rivera ripping the wings off a butterfly.

He tries to tell his Pai this, but he just shakes his head at him sadly. “You cannot fight the world, my son,” Pai says before sending him to his room for the fiftieth time.

 **A secret:** Peggy Carter had never really fallen in love until she met a skinny kid in the war with no sense of self preservation whatsoever. She had been with Fred for so long, and yet, he never made something in her stomach flip over this sickly kid from Brooklyn did.

Turns out, she was to fall in love twice, both times with men who wanted to fight the world until the world gave in, and both men found that the world was a formidable opponent. She just never knew that Daniel; he died before her time, and Steve Rogers only lost his fighting spirit in a far away future - a future Peggy would not live to see, if only just.

 **A secret:** Jack Thompson took the medal because he was scared to refuse it, scared to explain it, and because it made his dad puff up with pride when he brought it home.

For as long as he can remember, he’s made his father proud. From nativity plays to sports trophies and now war medals. He doesn’t know how to not be what Joe Thompson wants him to be, and he’s always known that his father wouldn’t be proud if he knew who his son really was. And Jack couldn’t bear that. So what’s one more lie about who he is, what he’s done? What’s one more secret after a lifetime of them?

An awful lot, as it turns out.

 **A secret:** Daniel Sousa tries to commit suicide when he first wakes up with one leg. He almost succeeds.

The nurses write in the incident report that the reason he had to be tended to urgently in the middle of the night was because his stitches came open suddenly, not that he used the sharp edge of his razor to methodically cut them open one by one. As each one snapped open and he felt the life draining out of him, he recited a line of the Lord’s prayer; _our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name-_

He doesn’t know if he’s happy that a nurse noticed the growing pool of blood staining the bedsheets before he bled out or not. He fought so hard to live, out on the Front, but he never imagined living like this.

Mae always said that people who committed suicide were damned. Daniel thought it was a fair enough price to pay at the time; he was already in hell, after all.

 **A secret:** Peggy Carter can’t hold her liquor, and never has been able to. She can count the number of times she’s truly gotten drunk on one hand, because after the first time she’d made a concerted effort to avoid it because of how quickly it incapacitated her.

One of those times was on her first real date with Daniel Sousa, who watched the transformation with rapt eyes and a growing grin. Another was the night Steve went into the ice. She honestly couldn’t remember pushing Howard into the Thames on VE Day - although she’s been assured it happened by multiple witnesses, including Howard himself - because of how intoxicated she was.

She’s been known to fake drinking in many ways - purposefully spilling drinks, discreetly draining one into a nearby plant pot (there are rarely helpful plants, but when there were she utilised them fully), ordering water and saying it was vodka, and a personal favourite being to keep apple juice in a whiskey decanter next to the real booze (for Daniel, who has very few demands in their marriage, but this is one of them) so she can astound guests when she downs one glass of ‘whiskey’ after another without becoming tipsy at all.

 **A secret:** Jack was Angie’s beard and Angie his for over a decade before they decide to cancel their mutually beneficial arrangement when Angie falls in love for real.

Her name is Lucy, she’s been their neighbour for eighteen months by then, and Jack adores her almost as much as Angie does. Their divorce is one of the most cordial ever conducted, and takes a whopping five days to go through, because they never combined their assets in the first place.

Jack’s mother is very bitter about the whole thing, muttering darkly about ‘that bitch’ whenever the subject of Angie comes up. Jack thinks the source of her anger is that she didn’t get any grandchildren out of the two of them, and he can’t exactly tell her that if she had it would have been an immaculate conception, so his solution is to get a dog and call it Angie.

“Cause its a bitch! Get it?”

His mother is not impressed. Peggy puts her head in her hands. Daniel snorts with aborted amusement. Angie cackles with delight.

 **A secret:** Daniel Sousa knows, deep down, that he’s using Violet as a crutch.

It’s not fair, and it’s not right, but he tells himself that if he can just keep at it long enough he’ll fall in love with her for real. He keeps at it. He should love her; he should. She’s too good for him, and maybe his heart will get the memo if he kisses her enough and holds her enough and cooks for her enough, maybe it’ll happen when he isn’t looking. It doesn’t work.

It still breaks his heart when she leaves, because he guesses he’s ruined for life. He’ll never be able to love anyone other than Agent Peggy Carter, and there’s no point in trying to be different, because if a woman as beautiful and kind and giving as Violet couldn’t be with him, who could?

 **A secret:** Peggy is terrified of childbirth. She’s not scared of much, but she’s scared of this.

When the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor congratulates her on her pregnancy, she seriously considers going to Howard and asking for a quiet abortion.

(Yes, _Howard._ Howard ‘I Don’t Like Rubbers’ Stark who has screwed half the women on the Eastern Seaboard and paid for more abortions than she’s had hot dinners. The man has people on retainer for that kind of thing, or so Mr. Jarvis has told her.)

She doesn’t do that, but she does make sure that she has an epidural, gas and air _and_ a Caesarean section when nine months are up.

Daniel very sensibly says nothing, instead choosing to murmur in Portuguese to his newborn daughter.

 **A secret:** Jack Thompson contracts HIV in his fifties, and prepares to die without telling anyone.

His father is long dead, and his mother barely so; Peggy, Daniel and Angie all know what he is- _who_ he is, rather - but he couldn’t bear their pity. And to the outside world, he is still Jack Fucking Thompson, a legend in the intelligence community and a man of steel. They say he’s got no wife cause he’s married to the job, and he’s not about to contradict them.

The junior agents share stories about him like he’s Chuck Norris. _I heard Jack Thompson got shot and walked it off. Jack Thompson made the Head of the FBI cry. I saw Jack Thompson break a HYDRA operative in less than 10 minutes._ Who is he to inform them that he’s just a man, made of clay and regrets and slowly creeping death that just started moving a hell of a lot faster?

Peggy finds out, of course she does. She’s not the Director for no reason. She’s the one who forces him to go to treatment, who blackmails him with dirt from fifteen years before to live, to _want_ to.

“Do as Peggy says,” Daniel says to him when he appeals to him for help, strangely serious, “we both know she’s right.”

So, God help him, Jack does.

 **A secret:** Daniel Sousa left the world of espionage for his family, not because he was tired of the game like he told Peggy.

She tries to convince him otherwise, tells him that he’s a great agent, an inspiration. Both those things may be true, but when she tells him she needs him he shuts it down right then and there.

“You don’t need me, Peg,” he tells her with a wry smile, “not here, anyway.”

That’s the closest he ever gets to telling her that he left for her. For their children, who were growing bigger and stronger and smarter and were beginning to question why Mum (not Mom, _never_ Mom, Peggy made sure of that) and Pai were sometimes gone for days on end or disappeared in the middle of the night. He gets a job in the government, managing people, something he’s always excelled at - it’s nine to five, Monday to Friday, and he’s always home to tuck the kids into bed. He bakes them cakes for bake sales and does the school run and cooks Peggy romantic dinners when she’s home. He never once regrets it, even when Jack jokingly calls him a civilian.

He’s not getting shot at on the regular either, which is nice.

 **A secret:**  Peggy Carter notices her mind starting to go at eighty three, when she forgets Daniel’s birthday. He teases her for it, tells her that they’re finally even after twenty seven years (he forgot her fifty-sixth, but in his defence, Angelica had been giving birth to twins at the time.) She knows it’s not just forgetfulness though - she doesn’t forget things that matter, be they nuclear codes, her brother’s smile or Angie’s phone number. She just _doesn’t_ \- but all of a sudden, she is.

She begins to keep a diary, something she hasn’t done since she was a little girl with too much energy and had a mother who didn’t know what to do with her. Little things, silly things - but sometimes she’ll open her journal to write down her day only to find she’s already done it; or worse yet, when she rereads past entries in her own handwriting and remembers nothing of the days they record. It seems like a cruel joke; that she remembers days from sixty years before with perfect clarity (Angie’s laugh, Daniel’s kisses, Jack’s sharp eyes, Steve’s grin, Jarvis’ pursed lips, Ana’s snub nose, Howard’s wink-) but can’t remember what she did at the weekend.

The worst is the day when she wakes up in an empty bed. She’s gets up, calls out for Daniel - he could be in the kitchen, making himself a cup of coffee, but the kettle isn’t on; he could be in the lounge, searching for his glasses, but they’re on the bedside table. He could be in the toilet, but they’ve lived together for over fifty years and she isn’t shy about marching in to check. Not there, not there, _not there._

She calls the police, dials _999_ only to remember she hasn’t lived in England since she was a young woman, then dials _911_ to report a missing person. The woman on the other end of the phone is bored and uninterested in this hysterical old woman, asking if her husband could have just gone to the shops or for a walk, if it’s been 48 hours, if she’s called family and friends-

Peggy hangs up on her and calls Jack. “Daniel’s gone!” She cries to him when he answers his phone sleepily, “I can’t find him anywhere, somebody must have taken him to use against me, against S.H.I.E.L.D-“

“Peg,” Jack’s voice crackles along the line, strangely raw, “oh, _Peg.”_

He tells her to stay put. He comes right over, strangely only ten minutes away by car. (Jack lives two states away, doesn’t he?) He raps on the door, hair unbrushed and eyes still full of sleep. When she tries to tell him, tries to tell him to call his contacts, whoever he can get ahold of, because there must be _some_ bloody point to being one of the most revered spies in the world, retired or not (as if they ever _really_ retire), some benefits to setting up a whole new goddamn security agency-

“Peg, please sit down,” he asks her. He looks so impossibly sad and sorry and Peggy starts to cry just looking at him. She doesn’t know why but she can’t stop the tears. The last time Jack Thompson looked at her like that he was telling her that a plane had crashed into the first of the Twin Towers. He steers to to the sofa, takes her hand in his. It still doesn’t prepare her for what he says next.

“Daniel’s dead, Peggy. He’s been dead for two months.”

Somebody sobs like their heart is breaking. After a moment, she realises it’s her.

 **A secret:** Jack Thompson had never planned on growing old. In the war he’d been living one day at a time, expecting to get his head blown off at any moment, and afterwards he hadn’t been living at all. When he got shot in California, he’d fully expected to die. He remembers wondering if his dad would be proud.

When he woke up in hospital, his dad wasn’t the one at his bedside. Instead it was a sleeping Daniel Sousa, and a groggy Peggy Carter who looked so relieved that it made his heart rate uptick. Jack hadn’t thought that anyone other than his parents really cared if he lived or died.

It had been Daniel who’d motivated Jack to power through his physical therapy, learn how to breathe when it felt like there was a hole in his heart, learn how to run when he could barely walk. _You’ve still got two good legs,_ Sousa had told him fiercely, his dark eyes staring into Jack’s very soul, _so get the fuck up and use them._

The AIDS should have got him, really. He’d accepted it was the end of the line. It was longer than a lot of people in their line of work got, and he felt like he’d been living on borrowed time since Okinawa. He got diagnosed at fifty four, and laughed until he cried when he realised that Roger Dooley, poor doomed bastard that he was, had kicked the bucket at the same age. _Promise me you’ll get the son of a bitch who did this?_ The Chief had said a lifetime ago. Jack wishes he could say somebody else did this to him. He wishes he could say he hasn’t been slowly killing himself for years.

It wouldn’t be a glorious death, or a righteous one. But Jack had decided that was okay, that was what he deserved.

Then Peggy Carter had come in and saved his life all over again.  _You remember Dottie Underwood,_ she said airily, like she hadn’t just asked him about his diagnosis out of the blue when nobody should know, particularly not her, _right?_

Of course he remembered Dottie Underwood, the original Black Widow, the woman who’d built a family under a false name. He’d let her go. She was one of the only ones he ever let go, and all the files said she was dead.

_Peg, don’t-_

_I won’t,_ she said sharply, as he knew she would, _not if you do the right thing now, as you did then._

That was the thing with Peggy. She was all about the right thing, not the easy thing. Jack was a convert, if a reluctant one. He wasn’t brave enough to say that maybe the right thing was to die, quietly and unspectacularly, not when she was glaring at him with that look on her face.

Even with treatment, he should have died. The statistics for men his age, men who had HIV for as long as him, were not good. But somehow, by some act of God, he didn’t. He made it to the finish line, just. Survived long enough to benefit from new drugs, new treatments, new miracles.

He’s still Jack Fucking Thompson, and he’s still alive. He’s a relic of a lost age; you wouldn’t look at him, with his walking stick and his cataracts and his fifty year old pocket watch, and believe he was any different from any other lonely pensioner, and maybe he’s not. Who cares what an old man once was, after all? His blond hair’s turned white, his medals melted down for closure the day after his father’s funeral, his chest still laced with shrapnel where the doctors couldn’t risk taking it out.

The world now, with superheroes and super villains, all flash and aliens, magic and crazy science, it’s not for him. That’s not a secret, you can see it written all over his face. He thinks it’s gaudy, gauche, to run around in a colourful suit and save people where you can be seen doing it. He’s learned there’s a lot more to being a hero than doing good when it’s easy, when it’s popular. He’s killed and he’s hurt and he’s lost, and he never got credit for it. But getting credit isn’t the _point,_ it never had been. This world of superheroes wouldn’t be here if it were.

Jack Thompson himself is a secret now, known to only a few. He’s a secret like Nick Fury is a secret, like Phil Coulson was a secret, like Peggy Carter and Daniel Sousa were the biggest secrets of all. When he does finally die, it won’t be a secret because it won’t need to be. Old men die every day.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at: [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com)


End file.
